In an astonishing April 2020 exchange uncovered by ICAN’s attorneys, one of Anthony Fauci’s senior advisors, David Morens (recently in the limelight for his Congressional testimony about violating FOIA), reveals that CDC had “shockingly messed up their tabulations of flu mortality” for over a decade. And that when notified of the errors, CDC refused to fix them. Fauci responded with concern about the CDC’s handling of mortality data related to COVID-19.
Lead Counsel, Aaron Siri, Esq., lays out the details here:
During a recent Congressional hearing, we learned that David Morens prided himself on his ability to avoid transparency and purposefully evade FOIA. The hearing revealed emails in which Morens boasted that he “learned from our [FOIA] lady here how to make most emails disappear” and “we are all smart enough to know to never have smoking guns, and if we did we wouldn’t put them in emails and if we found them we’d delete them.”
But in a recent FOIA production obtained by ICAN’s attorneys, we discovered that Morens failed to delete at least one smoking gun. In an April 2020 email to Greg Folkers, Fauci’s Chief of Staff, Morens made an astonishing admission about CDC’s long-term incompetence in handling data and NIH’s willingness to cover it up:
Greg, please keep this confidential but you should know that for over a decade the flu folks at CDC have shockingly messed up their tabulations of flu mortality. We discovered 5-10 years ago that various web page and published data were totally inconsistent and could only be explained by major uncaught errors[.]
… apparently various folks in [t]he flu division made and put up and published mutually-inconsistent figures based on differing subjective assumptions[.]
Several years ago, maybe 4-5, we reached out to the top flu people at CDC informing them that their own data were problematic, that as a sister agency we did NOT want to draw attention to it but work with them privately to fix and reconcile the problems. At first they were grateful, and set up a mechani[sm] to work with us, but then when they discovered the depths of their own mistakes … they did the usual CDC thing and circled the wagons, refused to return calls and emails, etc. [W]e didn’t pursue things but were left unsettled.
To repeat, this was at the level of cdc’s flu leadership. I think we have to accept that they have serious issues and have not fixed them.
Let’s not forget that throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we were told to “trust the experts,” many of whom worked for CDC. Recommendations and edicts handed down from on high at CDC were treated as gospel. The few brave souls who had the courage to publicly question CDC’s judgment were met with derision, pejoratives, censorship, and attacks on their careers and reputations. This makes it all the more infuriating to learn that, according to Morens, the “usual CDC thing” to do when its mistakes are discovered is to ignore the problem and refuse to discuss it—even when the mistake is discovered by another government agency!
But as shocking as CDC’s actions are, let’s not lose sight of the fact that high-level personnel at NIH were aware of the problem and let it slide. NIH’s strategy was to “not draw attention to the problem” and—at the start of a worldwide pandemic in which CDC would have unprecedented power and international attention—to just “accept that they have serious issues and have not fixed them.”
Recall that government policies that destroyed lives relied heavily upon CDC data. If CDC knew “the depths of their own mistakes” and yet relied on the same flawed processes for COVID-19 data collection and processing, then that is scandalous, and perhaps even criminal, behavior.
Interestingly, Fauci’s response to Morens’ email was:
We really need to talk about this. Does this impact their calculations regarding COVID-19, i.e. have they fixed their problem???
The answer to this question is obviously “no,” as seen from ICAN’s past work and exchanges with CDC. But even without ICAN’s prior work related to COVID-19, consider that if CDC can’t figure out how to accurately calculate flu mortality numbers under normal conditions, how can the public ever trust that CDC accurately calculated any COVID-19 statistics.
Unlike the NIH, ICAN will obviously not accept this incompetence and indifference from our taxpayer-funded “health” agencies. We intend to discover exactly who is responsible for this abject failure, what they have done to cover it up, and to hold these individuals—and CDC as a whole—accountable.
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